The invention relates to an electronic component which is produced with thick film technology, thin film technology or silicon technology.
Such electronic components are produced and applied in many different embodiments. In particular, when such an electronic component comprises or forms a sensor and is provided for measuring physical magnitudes, particular problems arise with regard to the encapsulation. On the one hand the component must be encapsulated as tightly as possible with regard to the surrounding medium, and on the other hand, the material covering the component must be applied as thinly as possible so that for example the temperature conduction to the component but also the forces affecting the component are transmitted as directly and as unadulterated as possible.
The usual embedding in plastics is mostly sufficient when merely the surrounding air comes into contact with the component. If however the component comes into contact with fluid for example such as water, alcohol, oil or likewise, then this embedding in a plastics mass is not usually adequate, since such plastic is not sufficiently sealing with respect to such fluids. The fluid may be diffused through the plastic and thus can reach to the electronic component which may become damaged or even destroyed by this direct contact. A certain improvement may be achieved in that the embedding plastic layer is formed correspondingly thick, which however leads to those previously mentioned disadvantages such as lack of heat conduction or bad force transmission. A reliable encapsulation with respect to fluids is normally only made possible with metal encapsulation which is effected by incorporating the component in correspondingly formed sheeting. Although the heat conduction of such sheeting is good, a coupling of the component to the sheeting is required and besides, the force transmission onto the component through the sheeting is practically not possible.
In order to have as good as possible transmission of force onto the component of the type mentioned, it is known for example from U.S. Pat No. 4,686,764 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,732,042 to cover the component, which here is applied as a membrane of a differential pressure sensor, with a relatively thick layer of gel, which on the one hand is so flexible that it hardly inhibits either the transmission of force onto the membrane or the movement of the membrane, but is otherwise so resistant that it does not come off when subjected to flow. Although in this manner, pressure forces may be transmitted onto the membrane quite well, the transfer of heat from the prevailing fluid onto the component is effected with a notable time delay at the minimum, since the design for holding the gel layer onto the component as well as the gel layer itself prevent a fast transfer of heat. Such an arrangement is thus not so suitable for measuring temperatures or transferring of heat.